Tigers Work the Night Shift in Nepal

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In the forests of Nepal, daytime belongs to humans, but the night
is the time of the tigers, a new study finds. The results may
reveal how people and predatory cats manage to coexist.

A two-year study of video from more than 70 motion-activated
cameras near Chitwan National Park in south-central Nepal finds
that
endangered tigers aren't necessarily driven from their forest
habitats when humans share the same space. Instead, the tigers
restrict their usual round-the-clock activity to nighttime.

"This has highly important implications," said study researcher
Jianguo Liu, a sustainability researcher at Michigan State
University. "In the past, people were always thinking we needed
to have tigers and people separate across space. This study
indicates they can share the same space."

Chitwan National Park is home to the greatest number of Nepal's
tigers, though the big cats are rare: A 2010 survey by the
Nepalese government and conservation organizations National Trust
for Nature Conservation and WWF-Nepal found that about 125 tigers
live in Chitwan and its surrounding areas. Tiger attacks on
humans are rare, though a 17-year-old was killed by a tiger in
Chitwan in April after going into the park to cut grass.

Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) are listed as
endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
There are likely fewer than 2,000 of these tigers in the
wild.

For the most part, Liu said, tigers steer far clear of humans.
The camera footage revealed that
inside the park, 80 percent of tigers caught on film were
roaming at night. Outside the park, that number was 95 percent.

"In other areas, tigers actually have more activity during the
day, so that means these tigers are forced to be more active at
night due to human activity," Liu told LiveScience.

Liu and his colleagues report their findings Monday (Sept. 3) in
the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The
researchers aren't yet sure whether being forced into a night-owl
existence is bad for the tigers. They plan to research that
question further, Liu said.